Hurricane Sandy Threatens $20 Billion in Economic Damage

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Hurricane Sandy may cause as much as $20 billion in economic damage and losses as the biggest Atlantic storm made landfall, flooding homes and offices, after disrupting millions of fliers and forcing stores to close.Insured losses may reach $5 billion to $10 billion, or about half of the total, according to estimates today by Eqecat Inc., an Oakland, California-based provider of catastrophic risk models. Sandy, spanning 900 miles, slammed into southern New Jersey at about 8 p.m. New York time and brought a surge in Manhattan exceeding 13 feet (4 meters). U.S. airlines have grounded about 12,500 flights, stranding travelers, and U.S. stock trading is closed through tomorrow in the first back-to-back shutdowns for weather since 1888. “This one has got so many facets to it -- you’ve got wind, you’ve got rain, you’ve got snow, you’ve got the full moon, you’ve got the storm surge,” said Doug Spiron, who is running home-improvement retailer Home Depot Inc. (HD)’s emergency response operations involving 350 employees in Atlanta. “Then there’s the impact of the sheer size of the storm. This one takes it to another whole level of preparation.” High Tide Record tides from the storm combined with hours of pounding wind and rain to flood electrical substations and shut down New York City’s financial district. Consolidated Edison Inc., the city’s utility, killed power to parts of downtown Manhattan, including Wall Street, and Brooklyn, as the storm surge, boosted by high tide, sent saltwater pouring into its underground power network. Before Sandy made landfall, the storm had knocked out power to more than 2.1 million homes and businesses from North Carolina to New Hampshire, according to utility reports. Power blackouts may eventually affect as many as 10 million people in the region for as long as 10 days. Earlier, before the storm made landfall, rising winds caused the partial collapse of a crane at a West 57th Street luxury tower called One57, designed to be the tallest residential structure in Manhattan at 90 stories. Sandy’s “size is enormous, with storm-force winds extending up to 1,000 miles from the center of the storm on both sides,” Annes Haseemkunju, an atmospheric scientist at Eqecat, said today by telephone. Storm Damage As the storm progresses, economists and analysts have varying estimates on how much damage it will cause. Hurricane Sandy ultimately may subtract 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points from U.S. gross domestic product in the fourth quarter as spending drops on services such as restaurant meals, according to Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina. The economy, with annualized GDP of $13.6 trillion, expanded at a 2 percent pace in the third quarter. “There’s a loss of activity that’s going to be hard to make up,” Vitner said. “If you’re a restaurant and you’re closed today, people are not going to eat two lunches tomorrow.” Insured losses from the storm may reach $8.3 billion, with the largest portion in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, according to an estimate from Kinetic Analysis Corp. compiled by Bloomberg. Suspended Operations In New Jersey, the coastal resort area of Ocean City faces damage from storm surge. The area has 6,246 homes valued at $2.51 billion, according to CoreLogic Inc., an analytics firm which ranked possible storm exposure by Zip code. In the vicinity of Atlantic City and Hammonton, the island community of Margate City has 4,465 residential homes valued at more than $1.4 billion, Irvine, California-based CoreLogic said today in a statement. Boeing Co. (BA), the world’s largest aerospace and defense company, suspended operations today at sites in Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and will determine plans for the remainder of the week on a day-to-day basis. The shutdown includes Chicago-based Boeing’s plant near Philadelphia, where about 6,000 employees build H-47 Chinook helicopters and V-22 Ospreys. Phillips 66 shut down its refinery in Linden, New Jersey, and Hess Corp. (HES) closed a facility in Port Reading, New Jersey, the Energy Department said. The Hess facility doesn’t process crude oil. Other refineries in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware reduced output, according to the department. ‘Rebuilding Effect’ Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), NuStar Energy LP, Phillips 66 (PSX) and Hess closed energy terminals they operate in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Virginia and Maryland, according to the Energy Department. There’s still a chance the storm will have little discernible impact on GDP, other forecasters said. “Generally there’s a disruption effect and a rebuilding effect,” said Mike Englund, chief economist at Action Economics in Boulder, Colorado. “The disruption effect should last about a week, and the rebuilding effect the following three or four weeks. On net, the rebuilding effect exceeds the disruption effect, but only by a small amount. So we might find by the end of the fourth quarter repair would be a small positive.” Sandy may cut into sales of clothing and accessories as the holiday shopping season nears, according to Oliver Chen, an analyst at Citigroup Inc. in New York. The storm may reduce November same-store sales by as much as 3 percent as traffic may fall 40 percent in storm-affected areas in November’s first week, which accounts for about 22 percent of the month’s sales, Chen said today in a note. Online Spending Consumers who can’t shop in stores because of storm closings may shift to online spending, according to Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles. A shift of one percentage point of revenue to online retailers due to the hurricane would boost fourth-quarter online sales by roughly that much, Luria said today by e-mail. The storm may help discount and home-improvement stores such as Home Depot as consumers stock up on supplies, while reducing purchases at specialty-apparel chains, Chen said. American Eagle Outfitters Inc. (AEO), Limited Brands Inc. (LTD) and Urban Outfitters Inc. (URBN) are among the companies with the highest percentages of their stores affected by the storm, he said. “The storm will disrupt last-minute Halloween sales and mall traffic but drive up stock-up trips to the discounters,” Deborah Weinswig, a Citigroup analyst, said in an e-mail today. As such, she expects Sandy’s impact to be “mixed.”